


Ceramic Dreams

by mckendie



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Akaashi and Kuroo are very bad liars apparently, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Cuddling, Multi, low-key angst, non-binary Semi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-31
Updated: 2017-10-31
Packaged: 2019-01-27 02:36:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12571844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mckendie/pseuds/mckendie
Summary: "His shoulders collapsed in, his glowing fingers shaking as he brushed them along Keiji’s hairline. He doesn’t ask, but Eita knows him well, well enough to see the way he avoids their eyes like he wants to apologize but doesn’t know how."It turns out that, between the three of them, Eita is the only one who can keep a secret.





	Ceramic Dreams

“Juris,” Tetsurou called with a grin as he appeared behind Keiji, bathed in the purple light of dawn and his footsteps nearly silent. He gave him a disapproving glare, one Tetsurou recognized from high school. 

“You should be focusing on the plan, Tets-”

He was cut off with a sharp click of Tetsurou’s tongue and a laugh, “codenames, _Juris_ ,” he reminded him, a shit-eating grin on his face as he drew out the name, “to keep _they-who-must-not-be-named_ safe.” The dramatics earned him another deadpanned glare, at which he raised his hands innocently.

“Just get into position, we don't know when or where the bomb will go off,” Keiji grumbled, trying half heartedly to shove Tetsurou away.

Instead he just leaned closer, smiling wide and enthusiastic, letting his forehead knock against Keiji’s. “Stay safe,” he muttered before he bounded off with a soft laugh, leaving behind an ephemeral afterimage of a rose, slowly dissipating into the air as Tetsurou’s mind drifted away from maintaining the feeble illusion.

When they got home Keiji would punch him for wasting his energy.

Just as the shimmering display disappeared, the last of the little light it provided cloaked by the darkness of the alley, the earth rocked beneath Keiji’s feet and fire consumed his vision.

Akaashi's hands shot up, fingers splayed and breath held tight in his lungs. He could feel flames surging forward, towards him, as he cringed away.

He could hear Tetsurou’s scream of his name in his earpiece, and if time hadn't felt like it was dripping from the edge of a honey jar, slow and golden and thick with tension, he'd have quipped back something about his blatant neglect of the codenames.

Heat seared his hands, fiery fingers digging into his own as he channeled everything he had left _outward_.

He needed to kiss Eita’s cheek goodnight again, to carry Kuroo’s too big frame to bed, just once more.

The stinging heat engulfed his arms, and he squeezed his eyes shut, the afterimage of fire blazing behind his eyelids. The pain was sharper now, like the bite of fire ants trooping up his arms years ago, cast in golden sunlight and honeyed winds that caught Eita’s hair and tugged it into an even worse mess than Tetsurou’s.

Before the pain could reach past his elbows he felt something change, almost like the subtle pop of his ears when Kuroo had driven them up into the mountains. A split second later, the world spun into a standstill.

Everything in his body ached, bone deep and terribly cold in contrast to the previously searing heat of the flames. He could taste blood slipping past his lips, warm and sticky against his frigid skin. The buzzing in his head, thick and overwhelming, faded.

Dust sprinkled his arms and fell away along cool, ceramic tracks where the fire had marred his skin.

There were no flames surrounding him, just the dull, mottled gray of the stone his power formed.

 

* * *

 

           

Eita had a schedule. They didn't stick to it often (mainly because Tetsurou was always dragging them to events and out to socialize) but when they were home alone, not a single light switch flipped on or shutter opened until Keiji and Tetsurou made it back, the schedule was the only thing that kept them sane.

They ate breakfast at eight, long after the bed had grown cold where Keiji and Tetsurou had lied that night, with them sandwiched snuggly in the middle.

Keiji said they ran cold-blooded, his eyes shining with a smile as he breathed warm air onto Eita’s icy fingers.

By nine they had brushed their teeth and settled onto the couch, TV tuned to the local news channel, fingers drumming nervously on their thigh. They reasoned that if they kept their eyes on the image (purple at the edges of the screen from a Bokuto related accident) then nothing could happen to Tetsurou or Keiji.

It was a juvenile belief, Eita had decided a few days after they had learned of their boyfriends’ secret, but ultimately calming.

The reporter's voice was shrill in the stillness of early morning, rattling on about various threats and problems that had cropped up in the night. Eventually, she announced the switch to live feed from a reporter they had in the field and Eita felt a swell of relief flood his chest.

If it was safe enough to send a reporter out, Keiji and Tetsurou would be ok.

The lady was already talking when the feed kicked in, the wail of ambulances impossibly loud. Behind her, figures were stumbling through the dusty streets and fires were raging along sidewalks.

Eita dashed out the front door, any rational thought left slouched in front of the tv set, vacant eyes registering the terror too easily. Their chest was tight with panic where relief had curled moments before, and they were only half dressed in their pajamas.

Racing through the streets almost reminded them of their childhood home, of curling up next to their grandmother and footraces with their father. Only this time, they could feel the stinging cold of panic deep in their chest, that came with sprinting headlong towards something spawned straight out of their nightmares.

They didn’t really know where they were going, just that the muted whispers slipping from the darkest alleys they passed where telling the truth. Keiji and Tetsurou were up ahead, shaken but alive.

Another left and another block forward, eyes squeezing shut to better navigate with the whispers.

It felt like they had been running for ages when they spun the corner and the world fell silent. They let their eyes slip open, taking in the overwhelming gray and Keiji, frozen in the middle of the alley. The image of their boyfriend, breathing and still on their feet, as comforting as it was, was disconcerting.

Something was off in his eyes, in the blood smeared under his nose and the slight tremor in his hands, like he was stuck somewhere in the past, immobilized with fear.

They took his hands, the hard ceramic coating his burns cold next to the warmth of his actual skin, and their breath caught, shadows growing around them without the sun moving from where it sat, hours away from the top of its arc. A muffled noise came from Keiji’s earpiece, a small black mold that Eita had thought to be a hearing aid the first time they met the younger man.

Carefully they pulled the earpiece out, holding it close to their own ear to listen in on who ever was on the other side. The feed was flooded with static, but underneath, an unmistakable voice rang out.

“Juris? Keiji, are you ok? Please,” Tetsurou’s voice cracked, and Eita couldn’t tell if it was from static or tears, “please answer me.”

A moment later there was a muffled clang, followed by a dull thump, and Eita wished they could regain their vocal cords to sooth their boyfriend. “Keiji please be ok, we’ll tell Eita like you wanted to, yeah?”

They still couldn’t speak, could only draw Keiji’s stony body to their own in a tight embrace, face buried in his pale neck, dotted with stone, and hold back any tears that managed to well up.

Time slipped away there, Tetsurou still muttering into the earpiece until Eita finally found their voice, small and croaky, but there.

“Tetsu, I think he’s going to be ok.” Eita wasn’t sure it was the greeting to use, if they should’ve told their boyfriend there was no need to promise Keiji they’d tell them the secret, because they’d known barely three weeks into the relationship, or to apologize for not being there sooner, his head is spinning a little from all the options.

No static interrupts the stunned silence, thick and heavy and like Tetsurou was standing right there, staring at them like they’d grown a second head.

“I think he overexerted himself,” Eita continues, looking for anything to break the spell of shock and what feels like betrayal flooding through the earpiece, “He might’ve turned the air around him into stone for a split second and smothered the flames.”

They don’t really know that that’s what happened, but the shadows along the walls insist in those echoing, frenzied whispers, flooding Eita’s every sense just beneath the solid anchor of reality.

A beat passed, then another, and crackling through the speaker came Tetsurou’s confused voice. “Eita?”

They hummed in reply, fingers lacing through Keiji’s usually soft hair, “I’m here, he’s ok.” Despite the terror still low in their gut they felt calmer, a frigid peace spreading just below their skin. “Just find us when everything is settled.” There’s something like an unspoken threat in the words, a promise of retaliation and violence, especially in the echoing silence that follows.

It takes Tetsurou fifteen minutes to find them with Keiji still curled in their lap, still immobile. There’s a frenzied look in his eyes when he turns the corner, like something has come unhinged inside, the little cap he kept on his power flipped and letting it flow freely from his finger tips, dissipating in flowing tendrils of angry reds and violent oranges.

He slumped by their side; suddenly losing every ounce of composure that had kept him upright and fighting. His shoulders collapsed in, his glowing fingers shaking as he brushed them along Keiji’s hairline. He doesn’t ask, but Eita knows him well, well enough to see the way he avoids their eyes like he wants to apologize but doesn’t know how.

“I knew by our third date, Tetsu,” they leaned over, holding onto Keiji just a little bit tighter as they bumped Tetsurou’s forehead with their own, “quit beating yourself up about it.”

The gentle chiding earned them a thin, wavering smile and a whispered reply, “guess we’re not as good at keeping secrets as we thought.”

Eita laughed, short and sharp, before struggling to stand with Keiji still in their arms, his skin chilly and lifeless, despite his chest rising and falling as he breathed steadily.

“Lets get you two dopes home and healed up,” they mutter, dropping their head to press a soft kiss to Keiji’s forehead and tugging Tetsurou into the shrinking shadow of the building.

Jumping didn’t take much concentration, gladly, just a deep breath and a question, a plea to the icy cold just inches below their skin, before they disappear into inky blackness. It felt like falling to Eita, it always had, until, as they felt the tug of letting go grow a little too strong, it spit the trio out, Tetsurou stumbling at his side when they appeared in their small bedroom, just feet from the large bed.

“Holy shit,” he managed to gasp, stumbling forwards towards the bed on shaky legs. Silently, Eita followed him, resting Keiji in the middle of the bed and gently tugging off his shoes.

“Wait, is that how you’re never late for our dates?” Tetsurou asked, sounding mildly offended underneath his awe.

“Of course not,” Eita grumbled, hiding the flush that would give away their lie by lifting the thick comforter and maneuvering Keiji to settle under it, “now get under the covers you oaf.”

Tetsurou laughs but complies, settling on his side at Keiji’s left, his hand reaching across Keiji’s stomach, as Eita does the same on the other side, lacing their fingers with Tetsurou’s with a near silent sigh.

They know that the next day, when Keiji wakes up, they’ll have to talk, but in the moment, with their arm stretched across their unconscious boyfriend to clutch Tetsurou’s hand, all they can do is bask in the feeling of the warmth slowly returning to Keiji’s skin

**Author's Note:**

> aaahhh! this was so fun to write! (i Live for superpowers)  
> i didnt actually plan for it too be this long but happy halloween exchang mack!!
> 
> also! i can't access my notes because i lost them but, if anyone wanted to know:  
> akaashi has (in a simplified version) the power of vitrification, so he basically can turn stuff into ceramic, glass, stone, etc. depending on its chemical composition  
> semi can manipulate shadows and communicate (kind of) with an alternate plane of existence  
> and i actually don't know how to explain kuroo's power


End file.
